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FARSIGHTEDNESS LASER SURGERY

“All my life, I’ve worn glasses. I think I first got glasses when I was in the third grade,” says Ben Anderson, whose eyesight was corrected with laser surgery.
58 year old Ben Anderson has wanted to toss his glasses for years. He has struggled with nearsightedness, farsightedness, and poor depth perception.
“Walking down the street, I might not be able to recognize someone I knew, which can be embarrassing,” says Ben.

To help his farsightedness Ben got Lasik surgery. Although traditionally used to help correct nearsightedness, the FDA recently approved the first U.S. Custom Wavefront Lasik laser surgery procedure for farsightedness.
“Visx’s wave scan takes a photograph of the light that enters the patient’s eye through the pupil, bouncing off the retina and coming back out through the lens through the cornea, so that it can fingerprint a customized version of the light as it bends through your eye,” explains ophthalmologist, Dr. Marc Odrich.
Farsightedness, also known as hyperopia, occurs when light entering the eye focuses behind the retina, instead of directly on it. This is caused by a cornea that is flatter, or an eye that is shorter, than a normal eye. Farsightedness can be corrected through laser surgery.
Farsighted people have trouble seeing up close, but may also have difficulty seeing far away as well.
The wave scan determines what needs to be done to correct the bending of light so that the rays come into clear focus on the retina.
“In that wave scan machine there is a whole program that determines what is needed to fix your eye, and the instruments that are available to fix it. The instrument is the excimer laser which uses multiple little spots and it then calculates for each and every treatment, the spots and where they have to go on the eye based on the photograph that’s taken,” says Dr. Odrich.
That information is then transferred by floppy disk directly into the laser which has an instruction set on how to fix the optics of the eye.
Patients truly receive custom-designed treatment. The entire laser surgery for farsightedness, which includes the exam, computer generated mapping and actual surgery takes about an hour and a half.
“If you need glasses or contact lenses and you know that you’re farsighted or your prescription has a plus number next to it, then it’s time to go see if you’re a candidate for it,” says Dr. Odrich.
Ben definitely fit the bill.
“I’m confident the improvement will continue,” says Ben.
According to Dr. Odrich if he operates on a Friday, his patients are usually able to drive by Sunday. Currently the laser procedure is not covered by insurance. For more information about the Visx Custom Vue Lasik procedure, you can visit www.visx.com.

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